From time to time, I will also use this blog to reflect on my academic enterprise projects. I hope you enjoy reading!
In order to help you navigate my numerous entries, here are some key words:
Education: Gamelan Workshops, Diane Abbott MP, Education and Change
Culture: Halle Orchestra, Distinctiveness of Gamelan, Focus on Gamelan Festival, Race and Sex; Black Masculinities, Race and Sport, Race and Classical Music, Art and DisAbility, Intersectionality and DisAbility
Community Enterprise: MEaP (Making Education a Priority) Presentation
Public Engagement: NCCPE, Innovation in Partnership
Social Mobility: Social Justice and Education, Raising Educational Aspirations, Dr White Middle Class Liberal, I presume
Research: Alternative Education and Community Engagement, RIHSC, Bio danza, 5th International Community Psychology Conference: Social Gaming, Online Collaborative Learning
Continuing Professional Development: Developing my Academic Practice
Politics: Are we in moral decline?
Academic Creative Enterprise 
Making Education a Priority
Just a quick one. We had none other than Diane Abbott, MP as our keynote speaker at our conference.
http://youtu.be/rgplVPOqdFc
She is a real fire brand and had lots of thought provoking things to say about the institution of education but also the black communities’ responsibility for engaging with the “institution” and demanding educational “justice”. Inspiring stuff. We also had some stimulating workshops looking at the different forms of community education provision from Cooperative to Free Schools to Arts-led Soecial schools and “everything” in between, some really excellent themes emerged. Look out for the outputs on the Faculty of Education website.
Only You 2.0
We premiered my piece today, members of the Halle, Electric Voice Theatre, MMU Gamelan and Live Electronics. We were hosted by Axis Arts Centre in Crewe and finished the residency in Halle St Peter’s in Manchester. We had such fun learning on Rachel’s (Dr Swindells, RIHSC) Sundanese (west Javanese) gamelan which is beautiful. Then I incorporated the traditional song Sekar Manis,
that we had learned into a dubstep and Old Skool, Roni Size influenced drum’n’bass track (the beats were live DJ’d by one of my gifted students, Guillaume DuJat des Allimes) underpinned by the Serbian folk song Drem ka mi se, sung by Electric Voice Theatre (lyrics: “Dream my mother/gran, close your dark eyes” “If you want to dream my son/grandson, then eat and lie down” – translations always sound more prosaic than their infinitely more poetic sounding native settings!!)
Here is my Interview about the project.
All of that was topped off nicely by MC Hypes, who MC’d about dreams and aspirations! The “mash up” really worked and was quite exhilarating. So watch out for the Youtube posts of the performance and residency.
Keep your eyes peeled on here:
MMU Cheshire, Axis Arts Centre – Only You 2.0
Halle News
Follow up to Only You 2.0 with Only You 2.1
I am currently developing a project with MC Blizzard, Rachel Swindells, Maxine Horne and others on another gamelan fusion project. Hoping to premiere the piece as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences at our Birley Fields campus, later on in the year. Will keep you posted!
Focus on Gamelan Festival
Had a really lovely day at Halle St Peter’s at Dr Rachel Swindell’s Focus on Gamelan Symposium that formed part of Focus on Gamelan Festival. My piece Only You 2.0 was premiered on Tuesday, where we had lots of fun. However, today in addition to playing on a gamelan from central Java, I met some excellent practitioners who spoke about how they use gamelan in their community and educational settings. What I found really interesting was the process of discovering the differentiating factor about the Gamelan other than its sound which is obviously central and essential. Sonics apart, I found the egalitarian structuring of the roles within the Gamelan that made the distributive and social aspects of Situation Learning an instrisnic part of the compositional process, without which there would be no piece, utterly fascinating and redolent of transferable pedagogic and facilitational processes. The interdisciplinarity of the participatory learning processes are truly mind boggling when I think about it.
Gamelan Workshops at Loreto College in Hulme, Focus on Gamelan Festival
Dr Rachel Swindells and I led some workshops at Loreto College Monday 3rd with one of my students Guillaume DuJat who DJ’d the electronics for me in my premiere at Halle St Peter’s. Loreto has its own gamelan orchestra. It is really very impressive (as is their facilities, music, dance studios etc). We also worked with pupils from Manchester Academy. We had a great day! I found out that Loreto hires out its room for free to community groups if they arrange it with Sean Gaughn, the Vice Principal, I was told by Bob (head of security), who is the all seeing eye of the campus. Head of Music Owain was our host, he even came to the performance of my piece. I introduced him to Tony Wright from the Youth Village Limited, as you can’t have enough high quality spaces and facilities. Loreto is like a university and better than many. It is huge and set in lovely grounds and hosts 2,500 students. That is BIG. Our faculty in Cheshire host 5000 students but you would expect that of a faculty of a university but a sixth form college boasting such proportions, impressive! Bob was telling me that they have also been recorded by Ofsted as the best sixth form college in the UK with a clean sweep of 28 Ofsted categories being judged outstanding……
I think more gamelan mash ups are in order and now we know we can do workshops locally in Hulme at Loreto, this is extremely exciting!!!!
The Distinctiveness of Gamelan
As I was listening to other versions of Sekar Manis on Youtube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPa7BF_2fr4
I was struck by what Rachel said in the morning (of Friday’s symposium) that the gamelan is not a fixed form of instrumentation, as it can be made out of bamboo, bronze, iron, voices, zithers – each material having its own specific sonic qualities. So I think what unifies all of these different gamelan manifestations indeed is what I suspected on Friday, the compositional structure of how the music is assembled not necessarily the more obvious sonic aspects we associate with the more “generic” gong/metalophone orchestration we more commonly encounter (in the West). Now I’m saying this out loud, as it were, it sounds really obvious but as a composer this is really a significant realisation, as it opens up a whole new world of possibilities of exploring the gamelan, not to mention as a music practitioner in various educational and community settings!!!!!!
What you write makes great sense to me. One of the things I hope the PGCE students will take from the brief introduction they get to Gamelan is indeed the compositional structure of how the music is assembled in the hope that this gives them further starting points when working creatively with young musicians either in the classroom or in instrumental lessons with a music service. I think I need to make more of this – especially to those (very few!) who really can’t see the point of gamelan as part of their training to be an instrumental teacher on a conventional orchestral instrument.
RIHSC (Research Institute for Health and Social Change) Conference at MMU July 4th and 5th
What an amazing event! It was held in our Business School (The Hub), this year rather than on the Elizabeth Gaskell Campus, this made a difference because The Hub has loads of collaborative open and connecting spaces where different types of events such as Maxine Horne’s performance installation
and pop up research surgeries could be mounted. I did two presentations: Young Musicians for Heritage project with Carola Boehm and Only You 2.0 – gamelan and collaborative working with Dr Rachel Swindels. The range of speakers and their research was staggering. I was blown away by the sheer variety and creativity of the presentations and the keynote addresses. It was amazing being surrounded by such brilliant researchers, academics and practitioners. Loads of mouth watering collaborative projects were discussed. So keep an eye out for them, as I will post them on here as they evolve! I also need to congratulate my colleague Rachel Swindells for winning the Exemplary Researcher Award. Brilliant.
Exciting Times Ahead!
Our journey so far: From The Young Musicians for Heritage Project to Raising Educational Aspirations in Hulme, Manchester
In the Department of Contemporary Arts, Faculty of Manchester Metropolitan University Cheshire, I delivered the Young Musicians for Heritage Project which used music and music technology to connect young people to their local Crewe heritage. The project also managed to link communities from Crewe and Hulme in Manchester, as they worked alongside each other through music to explore their shared railway and industrial histories. This resulted in visits to each other’s venues, shared workshops, joint project performances, joint funding bids and reciprocal support between the organisations. This project led to our Hulme partners, The Youth Village, developing a greater appreciation of their own local heritage and prompted a re-invigoration of their Hulme Hippodrome restoration project.
As a result of our award winning (Manchester Beacons Recognition Award: New Partnership, p.13) partnership-building through previous arts/heritage-based projects and as part of our wider Birley Fields Campus community development plans, in my role as NCCPE Public Engagement Ambassador, I am now leading the efforts in working with our Hulme communities on raising educational aspirations in the area by exploring how we, as a university can best support the setting up of their own community learning resource . We initiated this phase of our engagement plans with a large Faculty of Education-funded community/university education conference which attracted over 200 delegates from the local communities, 80% of whom represented community organisations from across the Greater Manchester region . Diane Abbott, MP was the keynote speaker. In the conference workshops, we explored the different formats of community schools (free, studio, co-operative, arts-led special, supplementary) and examined how each could meet the needs of the local Hulme communities. As soon as the webpage with the conference outputs is ready, I will post the link here.
Following the conference we conducted extensive community consultations with organisations who were represented at the conference where the feedback we received was that the communities felt that they had been sitting on a home-grown solution to the challenge of raising educational aspirations in their communities; that is, their Supplementary Schools. Having identified this is as a community outcome, with our principal community partner, The Youth Village we are now working on developing a pilot project to form a small MMU supported-hub of our supplementary schools that will support each other by sharing resources, by providing teacher and curriculum-support/CPD and by looking at funding and self-sustainability. After the pilot, we hope to roll this hub out to include more supplementary schools in Manchester and beyond.
I’ll definitely be posting our progress with this latest initiative!!!!
Alternative Education and Community Engagement: Making Education a Priority
I’m very pleased to announce that Palgrave Macmillan will be publishing my book (edited volume) about the education themes that arose from the Making Education a Priority conference. The book will explore the ethics and philosophical considerations of the marketization of education as it is manifested in the Free School, Studio School, Co-op School and Supplementary School models. The book will also be exploring what critical pedagogy looks like in the community and the emancipatory use of the Arts in Education that can promote social justice. I will keep you abreast of how this project progresses…….
The Quiet Revolution Coursing through our Education System
Some musings on how our education system is shaping up for the future.
A taster of the potential of the catalytic nature of the Arts towards Social Justice?
I was really interested in how the power of these arts based projects (Young Musicians for Heritage and Only You 2.0) in the communities I worked with two MC’s from Crewe and Manchester to gain places in my department of Contemporary Arts to study music, community practices and creative writing. MC Hypes from Manchester used his Foundation Year in Creative Arts Leadership and Creative Arts Practice at Crewe (which I co-led and co-designed) to gain a place at UCLAN where he graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Studio & Live Music Production in 2018 (I am very proud of him). This is significant as these two youth leaders have become local role models for younger musicians in their communities, where education is slowly becoming valued again. I think what was important was that these artistic projects, led these two musicians to re-evaluate the value of education on their terms, so that they could see the point of Higher Education and what it could do for them, not just in terms of employment prospects but more broadly in terms of their sense of self determination. We cannot underestimate the power of this ripple effect in their communities, for whom education has largely been “inaccessible” and “irrelevant”.
We also must not fall into the trap of thinking of Education merely as a commodity that can be traded for social mobility, especially as this very concept of mobility is currently eroding before our very eyes. I believe that Education has to be more than JUST a ticket for successfully accessing a neo-liberal paradigm because if its function is only just this, then as educators we will only be churning out graduates to fit into the “system”, cogs in the wheel of a neo-liberal ideology that exists only by (re)producing structural inequality (despite what market advocates will tell you). Surely, education is about more than this? I would like to think that the Arts can encourage a self reflection and expression which can better enable a potential learner to re-engage with education on their terms. This has never been more important for deprived communities for whom education can seem a more and more remote possibility with the psychological factors of debt aversion that our increasingly marketised education system brings.
Perhaps we need to update our concept of social mobility where WE move upwards up the social ladder to where we MAKE THE LADDER MOVE to our present position. I think education can be a powerful tool in enabling people to be enterprising and self-determining, where who they are and what they do from where they are can gain value without the need for being “mobile” in a dynamic sense. In our current post modernist era, surely learning how to “curate” your own knowledge and in the process generating value that is specific to you but valued by others has to be the way forward. In fact, it could be argued that this is exactly what has been done and continues to be done by those who hold Power in society but perhaps, as educators, by teaching our students to understand these hidden levers of Power, the education we will have to offer them, might just be truly useful to them after all, where they won’t have struggle to open doors that remain closed to them but create their own doors of opportunity (albeit with a struggle). Idealistic, I know but I am intrigued by the process of how this could be made to happen!!!! Cassie Earl in her essay about Critical Pedagogy in the Making Education a Priority Conference, explores this, as does Dr Kehinde Andrews in his essay about Black Supplementary Schools.
So I will keep an eye on this catalytic facet of the Arts for engagement (in this case in education), as some very interesting things could be emerging……..
Is the Choc ice our new National Mascot
Some musings on racism in football and its wider cultural significance.
Dr White Middle Class Liberal, I presume.
In witnessing the sectoral silence of academia in response to the plausible genocide happening in Gaza at the moment, I was reminded of this little piece I wrote a while back, about a challenging encounter with a young (white) academic historian. The attitude of superior indifference that I experienced in conversation with this scholar, has since encouraged me to consider: Is this widespread mindset of certain parts of the academy contributing to their deafening silence on Gaza that we are currently witnessing?
Originally written in 2006
One day, when I was making my way through a forest as exotic as the faraway lands of myth and magic, known to some, as the hallowed grounds of academia, I happened upon a unicorn. That rare beast of even rarer beauty, grazing in yonder pasture under the soft shimmering moonlight. I had to pinch myself, as I had never been so close to such a creature of other worldly proportion before. I had only ever read stories and dreamt nightmares about them. I treaded carefully lest I frightened it and caused its flight from my unbelieving eyes. It noticed me but continued to graze, however, with renewed caution, its horn glistening in the night air, like a slither of silver from the blade of a burnished sword. I stopped in my tracks, as the creature sensed potential danger from me. We stood transfixed by eachother’s gaze, our hearts racing, not knowing whether to fight or take flight. This moment lasted for what seemed an eternity, until, I suddenly plucked up the courage to address this beauty;only for it to introduce itself to me as the mythical White Middle Class Liberal!! Well, much to my shock and creeping dismay, this epitome of the exotic was fast loosing its otherworldliness. I squinted desperately trying to see again this fantastic horn of legend. All I saw was a white horse. Or was it a pony? Donkey, anyone? Did I imagine it? Was my immediate recall of our encounter somehow corrupt or indeed incomplete? Was it ever pure? Hmmmm. Anyway, myth debunked, we grabbed a decaf latte and a pot of Earl Grey and continued our strange encounter:
One of the terms that makes me very suspicious when talking with certain academics is the middle class liberal. It is the word liberal which makes me think that the implication of moderate views somehow needs to be defined, as the starting point or common ground cannot possibly be one of moderation in the first place. When applied to people, the word liberal tends to invoke a type of person who is eager to display their credentials of moderate (or progressive) thinking in a way that betrays their immoderate views in the first instance. I suppose my cynicism of the word is further enhanced by the fact that the word liberal has become a pejorative term by its association with extreme thinking and views in popular culture.
My thoughts centre around a certain (young) academic historian at a local university, the fabled unicorn in my magical encounter, who calls himself a white middle class liberal, claiming to have an understanding of racism and prejudice. As we talked and explored the issues around racism, it became apparent to me that his grasp of the subject was far from detailed. It was interesting that his liberal views of racism did not allow him to see racism in any other terms other than direct abuse. The concept of pervasive, almost invisible racism, which often has a debilitating and corosive effect in the long run, seemed to be an alien one to him. It was almost as if his reluctance to see prejudice which was endemically lodged in a system or institution, blinded his view of what oppression, faced by many, was actually about. From his relatively cosy and safe position, grazing in his hallowed pastures of academia, where the subtleties of exclusion and the lack of equal opportunities play no part in is life, he found it hard to see that exclusion and lack of equal opportunity play major parts in the lives of the disenfranchised, from all political minorities.
As an academic historian he explained to me that historical data was objective or as close to being objective as possible and that current trends in historical analysis veered away from the historical narrative of the chronological, towards a piecing together of seeming disparate elements into a patchwork of events which do not necessarily relate in a linear fashion. All of this seemed all well and good except for the small matter of realising that any form of contextualisation albeit, linear, or not, forms a narrative. A narrative by its very nature must come from a perspective (whether it be first or third person or indeed a mixture of the two or any other non linear voice/device) and that perspective cannot be entirely objective. My colleague mentioned the rule of observation, which roughly states that the act of observation affects that which is observed, but assured me that the burning topic of debate currently amongst historians is exactly this ; how to minimise the impact of observation?
I was really becoming intrigued by his line of argument, as he disputed the existence of the politicisation of contextual analysis of historical data, maintaining that the evidence is a pure entity, which is somehow only corrupted by analysis. Viewed through Alice’s looking glass, his remonstrations reminded me very much of the Nietzschean view of the multi faceted nothingness at the centre of a myriad of views and perspectives, creating a world devoid of anti-thetical values. This paradox made me smile, somewhat. Back to our discussion about racism…..On account of historical analysis being so pure and incapable of corruption, historical conclusions about race and culture were deemed accurate and true, irrespective of standpoint, providing the historical data was pure. Unfortunately, reading between the lines, I took this to mean that the Eurocentric view of world history was the only true view. My colleague went on to explain, tangentially, that Sub-Saharan African historians, who do not enjoy the same resourcing and funding as Western historians, are somehow bound to produce “substandard” historical analysis or archives. I ventured that the Western system of historic classification and contextualisation will only be one of many ways of looking at and making sense of the past. I argued that some cultures have oral traditions, which transmit historical data through myth and story and that these stories have equal validity to western style archives. My learned friend disagreed with me, making the distinction between folkloric history and western-style documentary. For him to imagine the distinction between oral folklore and archived history in many cultures purely artificial, would have been an anathema to him. He seemed to miss the point that both repositories of data would need to be contextualised and analysed in some way before any real narrative could be attained.
This esoteric detour into what constituted the rigours of academic historical analysis had a direct relevance to me, as the way in which history is contextualised by the historians and used by others, has a profound effect on the creation of a cultural/national or racial consciousness. So in my mind, history could be used as a force for good or evil. Of course, my friend disagreed with me, as historical evidence, in his Nietzshean rational, is anti thetical in essence. We agreed to differ at his juncture. But this was a real cross-roads for me, as the word liberal kept on coming back to haunt me. I was beginning to see in concrete terms how this self-confessed middle class liberal was using history (by its very highest academic definitions) as an excuse for not addressing prejudice. From his perspective of high academia, he was reluctant to acknowledge the need for historians who were not so much revisionist but more correctionist. By that, I mean those black historians who filled in the gaps of received historical wisdom by retrieving missing bits of that precious and pure historical data, which were conveniently omitted. This was a huge bone of contention, leading to the assertion that such historians were not real historians and could only be described as amateur.
In the pit of my stomach, I could feel a line of thought fermenting into; history in all its shades of complexity, tells who we were, who we are and why we’re doing what we’re doing at present and what our potential is; history informs our self esteem and self actualisation on a multiplicity of levels; incomplete history fashioned into a truth has the power to distort the esteem and self actualisation of its subjects; this distortion can become fertile ground for racist and prejudice ideology. My thoughts still fermenting, my status as lay enquirer looking into academic historical analysis challenged and ridiculed, I feel a tangible form of racism almost deliciously effusing over me, as it’s being couched in faux-sophisticated academic lingo. This view of liberal thinking progressively irritated and saddened me in equal measure, as his reasoning seemed at once lazy and apathetic (sic, “institutional racism does not exist”).
It seemed my strange encounter with this historically corrected (not revised, alas!) unicorn seemed only to have begun.
It appeared that this form of liberalism knew no bounds, as the next pasture to be decimated due to over grazing, was that of disability and equality of opportunity. My liberal friend posited that a reprioritisation of funding towards, say, business working with the community arts and the disabled, leading towards economically self sufficient businesses and franchises capable of contributing to the general entrepreneurial wealth of a nation, was small fries, indeed just tinkering with the system. His argument was that we were still only dealing with the model of the economy fashioned like a balloon, where one part of the balloon squeezed would displace another. He was asking me how we would fund such liberal ventures. Which funds would we take from in order to fund such liberal minded schemes? (If we were to exclude higher taxation, which he thought to be unsustainable in the long run) I promptly answered, the defence budget, with which he agreed! But his main point was, that such tinkering with the system was minute and only demonstrated the ultimate lack of control a government actually has over the state and its tools of engagement. Implying that it somehow was futile for us to expect any real change from our governments. What we needed, was to have an entirely different system, with entirely different values. Intrigued, I asked him to elaborate and maybe furnish his point with some examples. My colleague trotted out turn of the (twentieth) century Russia and Argentina amongst his (best) examples – his point being; Communism was truly a radical alternative to Capitalism. Of course, I had no choice but to agree, but felt loathe to point out the former’s most recent demise.
I tried to argue that within the present system, a mere tinkering/reprioritisation of funding in certain areas would be felt to be radical on the ground by its grass roots beneficiaries and since it was in everyone’s best interests to find a system that works, the radicalism of an economy run by communist values seemed, somehow irrelevant if not entirely inappropriate. But why radical? He could have asked, but alas, didn’t. Well, in order to have government funded schemes in place to enable people with disabilities (especially those with learning difficulties) to set up their own businesses, accessing business mentoring schemes, using elements of the community arts as tools of project management, self determination and expression, working towards fully profitable businesses that would, in time, outgrow the need for start up support and funding, whilst actually positively impacting on the labour market of its local community, would mean that a root and branch audit, of the way our institutions provide training, care and education of people with disabilities, would need to be carried out. To equip individuals with the skills enabling them to grasp such ambitious opportunities, would mean a radical (that word again!) change in attitudes vis a vis how and indeed why institutions provide the care, training and education they do, and how they are resourced. He looked at me transfixed, deciding between fight or flight, immobilised by the two…….
Through a myriad of twists and turns of ontology where actual experience of the disabled was challenged, as grounds for expertise, and was subsequently found mournfully wanting, in the form of a three year flat share with a paraplegic, who looked down upon active measures to ensure equality of opportunities for the disabled but later became a civil servant at MI6!(?), our encounter ended with discussion about work practices; namely Facilitation versus Instruction.
Well, my White Middle Class Liberal History lecturer friend was really exercised over this one! His liberal views about race and disability were put into perspective by his ideas behind teaching. It was this point which worried me the most, as it was his attitude towards the dissemination of knowledge (his brand of liberal knowledge), that I found the most disturbing, considering the young enquiring minds in his charge. As if it wasn’t enough to have his liberal views, he needed to have a liberal way of communicating them. My colleague found it hard to conceptualise the idea that the ego (of the facilitator) can either be removed from a faciliational process with a group or be so completely integrated and consciously subsumed into the ego of the group so as to be effectively removed; that it is perfectly possible to facilitate a process which belongs entirely to the group and has not been imposed upon by the facilitator in anyway. Albeit difficult to achieve, it is possible nevertheless, I tried to assure him. This, my colleague balked at and proceeded to deride my assertion. “So you have a perfect way of working do you?” I was barracked. I tried valiantly to explain that the idea of perfection is irrelevant in an organic process derived from the group itself. “So you have never led a session where you thought you could have done it better or that maybe you shouldn’t have said something that you did?” My answer was a resounding; no, with the only exception of the Matrix-style staff meetings which some organisations hold as part of their reflective and evaluative processes.
That was like waving a red rag to bull, or in our case unicorn. He missed my feeble attempt at ironic reference to our conversation being a case in point. I explained to him that as a good facilitator one is trained (but largely gifted) at being hyper aware of oneself, one’s internal dynamics and how they relate to the group dynamic and its relation to the individual internal dynamics of the group member and how one uses this awareness to be in a constant state of self reflection so as to respond to the needs of the group and its individuals, implementing effective conflict resolution, which becomes part of the group dynamic and work process. So, in such a creative and organic environment, there is no such thing as perfection or imperfection only effective communication and rapport building. It became clear to me that the horn which elevated this exotic (and even quixotic) creature to the heights of mystical folklore was actually just a trick of the light afterall, and yes, I was just looking at a donkey. I could see that in order to further propagate his liberal views, he needed to exert and maintain control of the creative and original thoughts of his students. This explained to me why he was so unfamiliar with the facilitational process of working. In disseminating his idea of pure, uncorrupted historical data for esoteric and academic historical analysis, (entrenched in his world of the instructional) it would be of paramount importance that his students did not contaminate this so-called purity with their own questions, ideas or opinions.
Our encounter ended as suddenly as it began, as our fabled unicorn finally decided to take to flight……….
This close up encounter of a self confessed White Middle Class Liberal left me feeling rather disquieted in relation to much wider questions about our opinion formers, our chattering and ruling classes, our custodians of the temple of knowledge sited on the hallowed grounds of academia (at all three levels). How widely spread are the views of this particular White Middle Class Liberal? If not those specific views, the tone of superciliousness and seeming knowledge of what’s best for the plebicite. What hope for the unchosen and the undestined for real self determination, as they are fed insidiously clothed untruths about themselves?
Why is Classical music still as white as ever?
I will be writing a short piece that will pick up on some of the themes raised in this web seminar, shortly. Keep an eye out for it!
NCCPE (National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement) Engaged Universities: Always the Bridesmaid
Here are some of my thoughts on the new type of academic we need for this area of work with community engagement.
NCCPE Engage 2013 Conference
My reflections of the day.
Anyone, for a delicious slice of pineapple upside-down cake?
A metaphor for how I see the future of universities and Public Engagement.
What’s the problem with black masculinities?
Some of my thoughts on these issues that were commissioned by the academic long form space on Media Diversified.
Runnymede Trust: Race and Sex debate at the Martin Harris Centre, Manchester University, 7pm, February 13th
What’s the Problem with Black Masculinities?
I will be debating my paper at this event
Innovation in Partnership Conference hosted by the British Museum and the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education (NRCSE)
Here are some of my thoughts about how we as university can act as a broker for building cross sector partnerships in arts, culture and education.
Here is a storify of the Race and Sex event at the Martin Harris Centre.
My fellow panellists were Christina Fonthes and Joy Goh-Mah. The discussion was chaired by Sondhya Gupta. We had a great time.
Bio danza with James Ferreira Moura Jnr from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
I attended an interesting workshop on the 12th at Elizabeth Gaskell (MMU), where I was introduced to Bio danza. This is a form of community therapy/therapeutic dance that promotes interconnectedness, self-esteem and general well-being.
I was particularly interested in James’ use of this participatory activity, as he described how bio danza could be used to help people envision the sort of social action that they would like to achieve in their communities. So in effect, using these types of sessions to prime and unite community groups to take action in their local communities.
What I found intriguing was the level of physical intimacy required for this form of working. I thought that this was perhaps very much a cultural difference between Brazil and the UK where physical contact could be used as a tool for bringing people together for social action/change/empowerment.
In our session, we were introduced to expressive walking in guided pairs, paired hand massaging and circle dancing (holding hands in a circle and dancing)
In my experience of (co) facilitating mixed discipline music therapy sessions in special needs units, touch is used as a specific tool of therapy and is tightly governed by the “neutral” and “closed” space that defines a therapy-space (as opposed to a therapeutic space whose outcomes may be therapeutic despite its non therapy intentions). This reminds me of some of my early work in Edinburgh with the Hawkhill Day Centre where we used elements of Jabadao in our work with adults with learning disAbilities. So using touch in an open community setting, firstly to promote group cohesion and self-esteem, then to use these feelings to encourage social action outside of the group was a very interesting concept. James told us of a group of women in Brazil, who after attending bio danza sessions, approached their local authority to ask why their district did not have an adequate number of health centres.
I would like to learn more about how exactly this activity that resembles a form of community dance therapy can be turned into a catalyst or precursor for social change.
Ornette, appreciated your considerations! You got to express good thoughts and perspectives about the workshop and the use of Biodanza. It really could be used as a tool to strength people and, consequentely, to promote social change.
Silver & Gold Presentation Event for Supplementary Schools
Tuesday 18th March 2014, 5.00 – 7.00
The Council Chamber, University of Manchester
Sackville Street Building
MEaP (Making Education a Priority) was invited to give a presentation at this important Manchester City Council Event event last night. It was amazing to hear of the work that other supplementary schools are doing. It was also brilliant to hear of the research that the University of Manchester are doing with helping to track the linguistic heritages of the Manchester communities. Apparently, we have over 200 languages spoken in Manchester. I was particularly inspired by the community enterprise work that some of the schools are doing already. The Chinese Supplementary School based in Ardwick, headed by Jenny Wong sounded excellent, as she gave really useful tips for how a supplementary school could form a business plan to allow it to have the revenue streams to provide other community services. The Iranian school which also presented were doing similar things – providing health and well-being classes, community lifelong learning classes etc. This was very inspiring, as Dr Esther Oludipe’s own Highway Hope social enterprise (from which her supplementary schools orginate) also provides holistic community services including counselling, health and wellbeing classes, arts and crafts etc.
Esther and I would especially like to thank Jenny Patterson (Team Leader for International New Arrivals, Travellers & Supplementary Schools) at Manchester City Council for inviting us to such a special evening!!!!
Meeting Crispim Antonio Campos
I had a lovely encounter with Crispim who is a Brazilian psychotherapist working in Leeds. Crispim is a disAbility campaigner and is a father to a disAbled child. Crispim is also a wonderful painter. He was invited by Professor Carolyn Kagan to show and discuss his paintings. His artistic work explores aspects of disAbility both social and cultural, acting as a sort of catharsis for him. Crispim predominantly uses the female nude in a semi abstract way, very reminiscent superficially of early Pre-Cubist Picasso. He said that the female represented for him “purity”; a purity of form which would enable him to explore aspects of bodily subjection in the context of the disAbled body. Crispim did use male subjects in a few of his paintings but they were often not nude – in fact they were mainly head shots. In the context of gender studies, Crispim’s use of the female nude was intriguing. Was he equating the bodily representation of disAbility with the subjugation of the female form through the male gaze? His female forms were predominantly passive to be “gazed” at, especially as their eyes and mouths (sometimes their breasts and genitals) were curiously censored, as they embodied a “purity” for him. This patriarchal view of the female form was strangely European, reminding me of painters such as Velazquez, Titian and Rubens (although the females (Venus depictions) in these paintings are given the opportunity to answer back with a returned gaze, at least), whereas his male subjects had that broken, anguished, Bacon-esque quality for me. Transposing this to disAbility makes for provoking thoughts! (This for me, “emasculated” his female nudes, where his nudes weren’t allowed to even return the gaze of the viewer or let alone utter any words of challenge unlike his Titian, Rubens and Valazquez Venus counterparts who exerted Power by seeming to control their sexuality via the viewing of their naked form. Was this how he felt people with disAbilities feel or are viewed or how he views them?????).
The gendered theme in his work was continued in his use of the “wounded” male images (Jackson and bell hooks have much to say about the wounded male in Black iconography and its forbidden license), which obviously did not represent the female purity of his other images. I found this to be a very interesting juxtapositioning with how his Art was communicating disAbility. The wounded nature of some of the images, almost gave the subjects the status of disAbility – the wounds at once being a badge of honour for the subject but a mode of validation for the “gazer”. This was a perplexing tension when discussing issues around identity and who gets to control that identity in society – what is valid and who makes those decisions. The male and the female duality – which for me evoked thoughts around patriarchal representations in Art – was carried on in his deliberate use of black and white to symbolise a clear cut-ness of disAbility (which I questioned). Crispim’s use of colour was very sepcific as he used yellow as an accent colour in his black and white palette.
Finally, Crispim’s use of mythological themes from the Afro-European mix of Brazilian cultures was very provoking; for example of a disAbled figure re-imagined as a totem of Power and pride – a male figure.
All in all an extremely stimulating showing and discussion of some very provocative art!
Intersectionality and representing DisAbility in the Media
I took part in an online discussion seminar about this hosted by Media Diversified.
My experience of the PGCAP at MMU
I was awarded with a PG Cert in Academic Practice with Distinction
NEW METHODS FOR COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY: DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW
5th International Conference of Community Psychology (Fortaleza, Brazil)
INTRODUCING A GUIDE TO INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
Hayotte Paul
Universite du Quebec a Montreal (Canada)
Hayotte’s presentation was about the Canadian experience of citizen engagement. He said that in Canada community organisations were not formally recognised until the 1970s. Hayotte went on to explain that in the 1980s community organisations were created by government. This was viewed as a form of Third Sector partnership with community organisations.
The challenge for community organisations was that they needed to change their practices in order to justify government funding.
Hayotte introduced us to his guide, “Guide de practiques innovatrices en participation citoyenne”
How do you organise citizen participation?
Hayotte put forward a series of methods that could encourage citizen participation:
– Trading services between community members
– Community Video; films made by community members
– Citizen Theatre; pictorial and Forum theatre
– World Cafe
Cafe discussions about community issues organised in a sort of round robin format to allow everyone the opportunity to engage in the discussion in small group settings. (This reminded me of a version of speed dating).
THE MIXED METHOD RESEARCH AS A FACILITATOR OF COMMUNITY INTERVENTIONS
Jorge Castella Sarriera, UFRGS, and James Ferreira Moura Junior
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil),
James outlined how using mixed methodologies was useful to the facilitator who is working to facilitate change in the community.
James mentioned tools such as:
– Focus groups as a qualitative and quantitative methodology
– Using surveys as a quantitative methodology
– Using case studies as a qualitative methodology
THE PROMISE OF GAME DESIGN FOR COMMUNITY PRACTICE
Scott Gaule
Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
Scott introduced us to the social application of gaming. He talked about:
Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy
This game was about a woman’s experience of her gender re-assignment surgery and process in general. Scott said that is simple game, much like Super Mario with low fidelity graphics but was surprisingly moving and informative.
Phone story by Michael Pineschi
This game is about the how I-phones are made and looks at the company’s ethical working practices. Scott said that Apple did not like the critical nature of the game and suggested that Michael should have written a book about it instead of using the game format. Scott talked about a similar game called Molleindustry that explored the labour conditions and production processes for Macdonalds.
Scott mentioned Gonzalo Frasca’s thesis, “Videogames of the Oppressed” where the player is described as being simultaneously immersed in the game whilst also having an important critical detachment.
Scott talked about Simulation games that allow players to redesign the game. He also spoke about Alternate Reality Games where players are given a narrative that encourages social collaborative play, like treasure hunts. The play happens in the real world but is conducted via email (or text message). One such game is the 2013 Raiders of the Lost Crown about finding the mythical feathers (head-dress of Montezuman Royality). Scott said that this game allowed players to learn about the histories and contemporary social contexts of the indigenous people.
Scott mentioned two games developers who worked more in the area of Community Practice.
Invisible Playground are developers based in Berlin. They use Berlin as a site and break it up into game spaces. They do this by collecting stories about Berlin from its citizens and using the information gathered to create site specific games.
This made me think about my Young Musicians for Heritage Project and whether its Facebook page could be similarly turned into a Crewe specific game?
Copenhagen Game Collective uses augmentation to keep folk games alive and current to this generation.
Scott said that there is currently a move towards promoting game designs where players are encouraged to design their own games. I was particularly interested in this aspect of Scott’s paper because Minecraft had been identified in my own research as an important online social collaborative platform for schools. This is especially important as coding has just been introduced to the National Curriculum for Computing.
In the post talk discussion, Scott said that Minecraft is a good way into coding and programming and that it is good environment for social collaborative learning.
VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES AND ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS PROMOTING COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
5th International Conference of Community Psychology (Fortaleza, Brazil)
HOW TO ENHANCE STUDENT’S EMPOWERMENT AND CP INTERVENTION SKILLS THROUGH COMPUTER SUPPORTED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING (CSCL) AND FACEBOOK
Donata Francescato Professor of Community Psychology, Coordinator of the
Community Psychology Online Laboratory to study territorial communities, virtual-learning communities and social networks.
Department of Dynamic and Clinical
University of Rome (Italy)
This session was about using Facebook as a collaborative platform for student engagement. Some pedagogic processes included exploring emotions through writing film scripts in groups
Movie script technique
– Deciding on genre, title, plot and characters
– Student groups critique each other’s film plans
Donata said that in her experience the advantages of online collaboration are:
– Online material is always available
– Quicker feedback
– They learn quicker because they can review their work on line (self-archival)
Social Capital
In Donata’s study, online friends stayed together after course and met face to face because there were no online prejudices or social bonds that can often be generated by face to face contact.
Assessment
Empowerment begins with consciousness raising before giving them a task to see how they could make changes for themselves.
In order to measure this, Donata conducted content analysis and measured how many times “I” changed to “We” in their posts.
DRAWINGVOICE AND REFLEXIVITY BEYOND FACEBOOK
Caterina Arcidiacono Professor of social and community psychology and Stefania Carnevale, bachelor in Tecniche Psicologiche
Department of Humanities
University Federico II, Naples (Italy)
Caterina outlined the following process:
Drawing Voice Technique
– 5 mins one group discusses a question
– 3 mins another group discusses responses from group 1
– 1 min write key words from previous group discussions
– Change group again. New group to illustrate key words using drawings
– Share drawings on Facebook so all the class can see
– Everyone comments on each drawing
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN FACILITATING SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Serdar M. Degirmencioglu European Community Psychology Association President and Carlos Luis Zatarain, B.A.
Via Educacion (Mexico)
Carlos gave the following figures for global Internet usage:
– 39% global internet usage that was predominantly in the West with poorer countries with having less internet access.
Carlos asserted that social media can facilitate people coming together to make change.
An example of positive social action:
#Yoy Soy 132
This is an Mexico online viral video that students made to revolt against media bias in their political elections. This very much prompted me to ask myself, is this movement privileged by the status of “youth culture” and its acceptability of “youthful protest”?
An example of where using social media has risks:
Turkish Protests
– Protesters experienced harsh treatment by the police
– They formed a settlement in the park – The protest was broadcast through social media. People witnessed this online and police brutality was recorded
– Iconic image of woman being water cannoned went viral
– Psychologists joined the protest in a safe way
– Social media witnessing providing strong counter narrative to mainstream media and government control
Are we in Moral Decline?
In view of the current crisis in Gaza and my work with the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (and its disappointing silence on the issue), I am reminded about this piece I wrote in reaction to the invasion of Iraq.
Originally written in 2008
In the twenty first century, do we really think that the epitomy of democratic evolution peaks at the use of war? There are very few instances where the concept of a “just war” can be applied but all of the cases of a just war took place in an arguably bygone era. Even the war in the Balkans, taking place in the mid nineties is a little removed from where we are today in a new century. Never before, has the world been so interconnected in the way that is, in terms of its economy, culture and mass media. The term global village really does apply today and is no longer a fanciful idea. However, the closer the global community becomes, the more pronounced the inequalities between nations, their culture and their economic influence become.
It is this very interconnectedness which has paradoxically served to weaken the status of economic influence, as economies at their root are based on faith and trust. To large degree, nations and their economies are built on their moral position in the world. If, for example, a rogue state is perceived to have a bad international reputation vis a vis its moral stance on human rights, its international standing will make it very hard to attract the necessary investment into its economy. Another example of “bad faith” in an economy can be found where trade is made almost impossible for its expansion due to unfair trade tariffs, sanctions or just a straight forward ban on its products.
United Nations and Morality
The collapse of diplomatic success at the UN was historic in many ways. For the first time the collective moral stance of the UN Security Council actually exerted its (differing) will on the US and the UK. This is of significance because previous conflicts in the world were always approached from an a priori US/UK moral stand point. In fact, the wealth and power of the US could almost be attributed to the motto “God bless America” which has served to emphasis its God-given moral position. Politically, this has meant that “democracy” of an American kind has been imbued with a moral, almost religious fervour.
This automatic moral stand point of a “God-blessed” democracy, was for the first time challenged by other nations within the Security Council. Rather than a collapse in the moral standing of the UN, the Iraq crisis has served to show how vital the UN is, afterall. The main purpose of the UN is to collectively come to agreement as to what is politically moral and what isn’t. It really should be the responsibility of the UN and its Security Council to be the arbiter of “right and wrong”. The UN, should be the chamber where solutions are tabled and agreed upon collectively. If the UN seems to be biased towards an a priori world view of morality, which in this case belongs to the US, then it abjures its collective responsibility.
Perhaps, for the first time the UN was steadfast in its of role of arbiter and collective decision maker/problem solver. That the US and UK chose to walk away from these differing views said more about their real motives than the faults of the UN. The UN matured into the collective debating chamber it was always meant to be, as the will of one nation no longer had undue or pre-eminent (or even pre-emptive!) influence. It must be remembered that both China and Russia were also against war and, alongside France, are veto holding permanent members of the Security Council. That is in addition to the fact the other non veto holding/non permanent members of the Security Council were also against war, as evidenced by the alternative proposals put forward by those such as Chile (and Canada). These points show why it was always going to be a struggle to get the nine votes needed for a majority to pass a “second resolution”.
The motives of the US
What was very interesting about the most recent UN debacle, was that it highlighted the reluctance of the US to accept that its moral stand point was not the only view on the table. In fact, when others disagreed and held to their view with equal commitment, the US actively withdrew from the discussion. The message from such an action was “you either do it our way or not at all”, which rather sadly mirrors their “you’re either with us or against us” moral stance in international affairs.
So, it makes me wonder why the US in particular were so reluctant to examine other ways of achieving their objectives of regime change and disarmament, if these motives were actually genuine? In other words, if other ideas were brought to the table which did not involve conflict, but still gave the same result, why the need for military conflict?
One cannot help but think that military conflict was always the prime US objective for dealing with Saddam and Iraq. This is evidenced by well the publicised thoughts of Donald Rumsfeld prior to the ascension of the Bush administration. The fact that resolution 1441 was put forward at all was a UK-negotiated US acknowledgement of the UN. On November 8 and 12, 2002, the US ambassador to the UN, Jon Negroponte, and Tony Blair, respectively, pointedly stated that Resolution 1441 contained no “automaticity” for war, as stated in paragraph 12. It was upon this assurance for there being no trigger for war that Resolution 1441 found majority acceptance by the Security Council. To renege on this well documented assurance would seem disingenuous, to say the least.
If the US were really concerned with Weapons Disarmament, then a UN led/enforced inspection team which was properly resourced in terms of time, funds and intelligence (largely requested by both the impartial chief inspectors Dr Hans Blix and Dr Elbaradi) would have come very close solving the problem. To reject this on the basis of “material breaches” of previous resolutions seems to be somewhat obstructive in nature. As had been argued by various members of the Security Council, diplomatic avenues had not been fully exhausted.
Regime Change, on the other hand, presents far more moral difficulties. I suspect that on account of the moral ambiguities of following such a policy, the Disarmament crusade was used as a smoke screen. The removal of an evil dictator by military incursion into a sovereign state is morally dubious at the best of times. Paradoxically it has always been the invasion of a sovereign state which has started the major wars in our history, as invasions were always seen as undesirable, I am minded of many wars but in particular the World Wars and more recently the Gulf War. Usually the invaders, were not known as liberators but as invaders and their motives were always distrusted. In this case however, an invasion of a sovereign state, which had indeed triggered a war, was presented to us as being a good thing. History tells us that invaders never invade sovereign states for altruistic motives. They invade because they can and have the ability to further their own national interests at the expense of the conquered.
If Iraqi liberation were actually the real motivation, a military incursion would not have been the first method employed to ensure an outcome. Where was the democracy in a US led military invasion of Iraq? Putting aside the views of a large portion of the electorate here in the West and other places, the views of the Iraqi people themselves seem not to have been taken seriously, unless they conveniently mirrored US military objectives. Is it not an arrogance to think that the Iraqi people need liberating by the US? After the last Gulf war, the US did nothing to support the natural indigenous uprising of the people against the regime, which as a result, failed. So why should the Iraqis have accepted “liberation” on US terms, then? The plans for the control of humanitarian aid by the US in terms of the bestowing of permits on the approved NGOs and other agencies, did not bode well either.
Surely, it would have set a stronger democratic precedence, if the views of the Iraqi people themselves were illicited from the start, as regards how they would want to change the regime for themselves, on their terms, albeit with UN help. How do we know that the economic liberalisation of a post-Saddam Iraq and the natural confluence of market forces will actually benefit the people of Iraq? It is safe to assume that an American style democracy in Iraq would ultimately benefit only (or for the most part, at least) the US, giving it a firmer political and economic foothold in the region.
It is here, the UN would have and still could play a large role in helping the Iraqi people determine their own future. However, they did not need to be bombed and invaded for this debate to happen.
The Reconstruction of Iraq
I hope the UN uses it new found muscle in asserting itself on the reconstruction process. I say this because, how it managed its sanction policies towards Iraq in the past, was quite ineffective. It was not enough to blame Saddam on the misuse of resources due to the imposition of sanctions because it was the responsibility of the UN to impose smarter sanctions which gave no room for such flagrant abuses. This would have been achieved by the stepping up of the amount of UN led and enforced (using UN troops if needed) humanitarian aid given to the Iraqis during the period of sanctions to minimise the suffering of the people themselves.
If the UN plays no role in the reconstruction of Iraq and more explicitly is not seen to be leading the process, then stability in Iraq between its various ethnic groups cannot be realistically achieved by US occupation alone. We are already witnessing the dangerous precedence of “pre-emptive” action (if not strike) by Turkey and its own incursion into Northern Iraq. The probable conflict between the Turks and the Kurds, if allowed to develop will not contribute to peace and stability in Iraq or the region, as Iran would be bound to become embroiled in this conflict also.
International World Order versus American Imperialism
With its predetermined policy towards Iraq and its pre-emptive policies towards other sovereign states on the “axis of evil”, the world is waking up to the increasingly tarnished “God-blessed” moral position of the US. In the short term, the real economic ramifications will not be felt immediately, as its tarnished moral stance will only be first felt through its diminishing political standing in the world. We are beginning to see the seeds of this in the UN, despite the so-called thirty to forty countries supporting the position of the US. As its political isolation slowly but surely leads to its economic isolation, its perceived moral integrity ever growing rice paper thin – look at its belatedly and conveniently timed road map for a resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict – it will be interesting to observe how many of this “coalition of the willing” will remain “shoulder to shoulder” with a US, somewhat reduced in world influence and power, over time.
The role of the British government in this is most disappointing. To be fair, the UK did drag the US to the UN. Nevertheless, the British were never proactive in the instigation of their own ideas (even though we are not clear on what they are; only knowing that regime change was never one of them originally!). The UK was always put into a position of having to react to US predetermined policy, either as a mollifier to the US or prime negotiator for the US, acting as a second US ambassador – but crucially never influencing US policy, which unlike the UK’s, has been consistent throughout – i.e. regime change.
The moral standing of both the UK and US, but especially the perceived political weakness of the UK, its diplomatic standing failing to secure any agreement in the UN Security Council, has plunged both nations into international decline – neither holding onto the moral high ground. This moral decline will stand ,even if the war is “successful” as the real test will come in the securing and the maintaining of a peace and how much the international community will want to or is even able to participate in this process.
I suspect, the immediate and tangible results of political decline and isolation in the international community will be most keenly felt its reluctance to form a Global Coalition against Terrorism. How can the reluctance to form such a coalition to fight international terrorism, which is feared to increase as a result of this war, make the world a safer place? With the US retreating into a unilateralist position, only entertaining allies when convenient for itself, it will only hasten its decline, as it will be increasingly unable to single-handedly police all of the world conflicts and acts of terrorism, which may even affect its own national security. A world governed by the “pre-emptive strike” cannot be a safe or prosperous one, as fear does nothing to bolster the faith, trust and moral standing at the root of all economies.